


Fragging Incident

by kaasknot



Category: Star Wars: The Clone Wars (2008) - All Media Types
Genre: Anal Sex, Angst, Bad coping mechanisms, Clonecest, First Time, Grieving, Internalized prejudice (not sure how else to tag it), M/M, Military Fraternization, Past Character Death, Pining, Taboo-breaking, Unrequited Love, dubcon, officer kink
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-03 04:41:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 8,378
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24449032
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kaasknot/pseuds/kaasknot
Summary: “You want to fuck,” Fives said, the light of comprehension dawning over his face.“We both want what we can't have,” Cody returned, equally blunt. “I propose we… forget that, for the evening.”
Relationships: CC-2224 | Cody/CT-27-5555 | Fives | ARC-5555
Comments: 16
Kudos: 156





	Fragging Incident

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was kicked off by my un-friend, Cyan, who wanted an AU (..........of my usual, Very Canon take) where clonecest is a taboo the characters break and feel guilty about. I’M SORRY FOR MAKING THEM SAD, OKAY, IT’S NOT MY FAULT

Cody contemplated the hunched-in curve of Fives’s back and let an idea play out in his mind.

It was peak hours in the _Negotiator’s_ mess, when prime shift was changing over to swing shift. Brothers were everywhere: in armor, in fatigues, in dress grays, in blacks. They spoke or didn't, as fit their inclination, but they always sat with others. That's who clones _were_ : members of a social species engineered for maximum sociality to withstand the constant press of military life. They were nothing without their brothers.

But not Fives. Fives was sitting alone, the way he had ever since hitching a ride with the 212th. He’d carved out a spot for himself in an unused corner, a jarring clash of blue against the shifting mass of yellow, and kept his back to his brothers the way only the worst-hurt of them did.

“What's on your mind, Commander?” Crys asked. “Looks like it's weighing heavy.”

Cody turned to his unofficial aide and right hand. Crys glanced from Fives back to Cody, and his gaze was speaking.

Cody sighed. “I'm worried about Fives.”

“Fives is the 501st ARC?”

“Yeah.”

“That name sounds familiar…”

Cody waited for the credit to drop.

“Holy shit, Fives and Echo? That's _that_ Fives?”

“That's him.”

“But… where’s Echo?”

“You remember the Citadel mission we did a couple months ago?”

Crys nodded. “Ugly as hell. We lost a lot of brothers on that one.”

Cody nodded toward Fives. “We lost Echo, too.”

“ _Shit_.”

It was never easy, learning that one of the legends had bit the dust. Worse, that his other half hadn't, and was sitting in your mess like a half-finished question. _Fives and…?_

“That's not all you were thinking, though,” Crys said, his eyes keen. “I've seen your sympathy face, and that, Commander, was your ‘I’ve got an idea, but it might blow up in my face’... face.”

Cody sipped his caf. He knew when Crys figured it out, because he went quiet and lowered his fork.

“I thought you said you’d never do that.”

Cody didn’t answer right away, setting down his caf and staring at his half-eaten rations. He didn’t like to talk about this in front of Crys, if he could help it. He didn’t dare risk alienating him. “Fives and Echo were… like me.”

There was a long pause while Crys absorbed that. “I hadn’t heard.”

He wouldn’t have. _Cody_ hadn’t even known until just before the Citadel mission, when he’d caught them fucking in an empty server room in the Temple. He stared at his tray. That had probably been the last time they’d fucked.

He should have written them up. Should have dragged them out in front of legion formation and stripped them of their pauldrons and busted them back to trooper. Fraternization of that caliber was anathema in the GAR, where absolute trust in the brother beside you was paramount.

But he hadn’t. 

“All due respect, sir, but.” Crys’s face pinched. “You don't look anything like him.”

Cody pushed aside the crawling ants feeling over his skin. “Neither does he.”

They sat in tense silence. Crys was the first brother he’d ever come clean to, about his… perversions. That he hadn’t immediately reported Cody for reconditioning had earned him Cody’s loyalty and respect.

Crys finally sighed, leaning back. “Your funeral.”

“ _Thanks_ , Crys. That was really germane to this discussion.”

“Was it a discussion? In that case—”

“I'm not asking for advice.”

“Maybe you should, because this isn’t healthy, Cody. For either of you.”

“You got any better ideas?” Cody winced at how sharp he sounded, but this was a delicate topic and Crys was only making it more raw by talking about it.

Crys subsided. “No, sir.”

“Then leave my bad personal decisions alone.”

“So long as you _know_ they're bad.”

Cody ignored him and stood to bus his tray. He had a couple hours’ worth of paperwork to grind through before he could make any final decisions. Who knew, maybe he would change his mind.

* * *

“Still time to change your mind,” he muttered to himself outside the door to ARC territory. His nerves were chasing impulses up and down his arms; he fidgeted in the hallway and tried to get himself under control. He was Marshal Commander of half the goddamned army, not some green cadet. He went in.

ARCs slept like junior officers, anywhere from two to six in a bunkroom. Travelers had a little more leeway; sometimes they bunked with their fellow ARCs, sometimes they bunked with the line troops in the main berthing compartments. Cody had processed the paperwork for Fives’s transit. He'd requested ARC territory, and what with the war in the shape it was, Cody had had several solo rooms to offer. Fives had taken one almost before Cody had handed it out.

Fives opened the door, and Cody had to catch his breath, because ARCs in general were breathtaking, but sleep-rumpled, buck-naked Fives was singular.

“Commander?” he said, straightening from his exhausted slouch.

His slouch wasn't the only thing that looked exhausted. Dark circles dragged from Fives’s eyes, and he was underweight for an ARC. “As you were,” Cody said quietly. “Can I come in, Sergeant?”

“Y-yes, sir.” Fives held the door open for him. His bunkroom slept four, but only one bunk had sheets on it. They were messy, evidence of restless sleep, and Fives’s blacks were dangling inside-out from the top bunk. Fives had stowed his armor on one half of the double rack, one pistol in its holster and the other just visible under his pillow.

“This isn't disciplinary,” Cody said. He'd found that most people assumed they were in trouble, when he asked to see them. That they often were didn't help. “It's… well, I guess it's personal.”

If anything, Fives’s face closed up tighter, tension building up along his shoulders. “I'm dealing with it,” he said. “There's no need to make sure I've got my head together.”

Cody scrubbed at the back of his neck. “It's not that, either. Well, mostly not.”

“I'm not following, sir.”

“I thought… we have similar problems, or at least similar enough that—we both have. Um.” Cody grimaced. “You know what, I started that badly.” He ran his hands down his face and rested them on his hips. Crys was right. This was a bad idea.

“Why don't you have a seat, sir.” Fives looked confused, but also amused. It wasn't every day you had a marshal commander tongue-tied in your quarters. If they were more familiar, Cody would have worried about Fives using this as good-natured blackmail material, but they weren't close, and Fives was hardly himself. Cody sat on the empty bunk, and Fives sat opposite.

“So,” Fives said. “You think we can help each other out.” The cogs ticked behind his eyes. He took in Cody’s fatigues: he wasn't here in an official capacity. He had come to the door in off-hours, when the corridor would be relatively empty. He was nervous. The light of comprehension dawned over Fives’s face.

“You want to fuck,” he said. “But not just that, or you’d have been more open about it.”

ARCs. They were too clever for their own good.

“We both want what we can't have,” Cody returned, equally blunt. “I propose we… forget that, for the evening.”

Fives’s keen eyes stared at Cody for a moment. “Captain Rex,” he said, and nodded slowly when Cody flinched. “I'm short on blond hair.”

“And I'm sure my technique won’t be… faithful.”

They sat in silence, neither looking at the other, while Fives thought. 

“Why don't you just ask Rex?” Fives asked. “He was still alive, last time I checked.”

Cody ignored his waspish tone. “He's not like… us. Not interested in other clones. I value his friendship too much to damage it.”

Fives stared at him. “Ah, hell,” he muttered, looking away. “Why not, I guess.” He stared at the bulkhead, a bleak expression on his face, but his cock perked up against his thigh.

Cody edged forward on his mattress, his own cock filling at the promise of use, but Fives held up a hand. “No kissing,” he said. “I can pretend for anything else, but not that.”

“No kissing,” Cody repeated. He wouldn't miss much; he'd never kissed Rex before, anyway.

“Any boundaries? Preferred positions?”

“From behind,” Cody said. “You topping.”

Fives raised a brow.

“I won't have to see your hair, and you won't have to see my scar.” And Cody wouldn't lie, at least to himself: the thought of getting fucked by Rex was enough to send his heart racing. He stood and went to pull the blouse of his fatigues over his head, but Fives rose up and stopped him.

“Let me,” he said.

His hands were so gentle as they lifted Cody’s shirt. Cody suddenly found himself wrong-footed, unsure; he'd never done this before. Fives had had a year and a half—and… however long before that, if at all, to get used to the feeling of another’s hands on his body. Cody hadn't felt it since he turned five and his cock had made his preferences known. By the time Fives pulled his shirt over his head, he was covered in goosebumps and harder than he'd been in a long time.

“You sure about this, sir?” Fives asked.

“Just Cody.”

“Cody. Same question.”

He hadn’t been less sure about anything since ten minutes before he’d met General Kenobi. “I’m sure,” he said, hoping he sounded it. He stared at Fives’s body, now that he had the permission to. He’d contented himself with sideways glances at his brothers in the shower for longer than he could remember; it was strange, to be able to look his fill.

The breadth of his shoulders, the faint definition of muscle in his stomach, the curls of hair nestled at the base of his flushed, hardening cock. His thighs, his fucking _knees_ , Cody felt like a starving man at a feast. He ached to touch, but long habit kept him frozen. His eyes kept coming back to Fives’s cock, so much like his own: thick, straight, the veins in slightly different locations; the foreskin thin and fragile as it slipped back from the ripening head; and the glans, red and shiny, slick around the delicate little hole. Cody had heard people sucked on each other’s cocks until they came; staring at Fives’s, his mouth started to water. 

Fives’s fingertips against his collar bone snapped him out of it. They were a livewire against his skin, so intense a sensation that his arm twitched with it. He balled his hand into a fist before he turned it to cup Fives’s elbow. Those fingertips trailed fire, and through the haze of need, Cody realized Fives was tracing the network of shrapnel scars that had torn through his shoulder during his second battle, going on two years ago. There were still chunks of his own armor in there, knotted up in scar tissue, not worth the risk of surgery to remove. He looked up at Fives’s face.

His expression was absolutely riven. His touch was featherlight, so gentle it made Cody’s heart ache, as thought he was afraid of hurting him. “I should have been there,” he said.

Cody frowned for a moment—Fives hadn’t even been deployed yet, when Cody had spent a week in a bacta tank—but then he realized: he wasn’t seeing Cody’s scars, anymore. He was seeing a hypothetical Echo, one who’d survived the explosion.

Suddenly, Cody wasn’t so sure this was a good idea. This could only be tearing open old wounds; Crys was right: it couldn’t be healthy. He took a shaking breath, loath to lose those fingertips against his skin, but the welfare of a fellow clone was paramount. “Fives—”

Fast as a viper, Fives lunged forward and wrapped him in a hug. “Don’t,” he said into Cody’s ear, desperate and strained. “Don’t say anything. Just let me be glad without giving me shit for once.”

Cody couldn’t reply, could barely even think. Never, in all of his almost-thirteen years, had he ever felt skin contact like this. Fives’s was so warm it felt like he was running a fever; Cody tried to bury himself in it, press as close as possible. He felt Fives breathing, felt the slip of his chest hair against Cody’s, _god_ , his nipples, the press of his muscle; the fluttering of their bellies against each other nearly had Cody in tears at the sheer erotic weight of it, and Fives’s cock pressing against his own was his darkest dreams made solid, throbbing flesh. Cody clutched at Fives’s back and did his best not to come in his pants.

“It’s okay, I’ve got you,” Fives said, his voice low and intimate. “Let me take care of you.”

Cody buried his face in Fives’s shoulder. He shouldn’t have done this. Before, he hadn’t known. He hadn’t _known_. 

“I’ve got you, ner riduur,” Fives whispered, his voice cracking a little, as he slipped his hand down the back of Cody’s trousers. Cody panted, every nerve blazing with anticipation. Fuck, what he wouldn’t give for Rex to call him his riduur. Fives’s hand cupped Cody’s asscheek in one blazing, firebrand hand, and then he fucking _squeezed_ , and Cody was humping forward into Fives’s belly before he knew what he was doing, that hand on his ass laying open a line of nerves straight to his cock.

“Shh, shh,” Fives murmured against the tender skin of his neck, pressing down a soft kiss. Cody was pinned between the sensations of it all: hand, chest, lips; he was melting away beneath raw sensation. “Must have missed me, eh?”

It wasn’t anything like what Rex would have said, but Cody heard it in his voice just the same, and he sighed out, “Yeah.” He fell into the fantasy: Rex greeting him after a long tour apart. He’d be furnace-hot like this; his cock would be leaving slick little trails against Cody’s stomach just like this.

“Let’s get you out of these trousers, sir.”

Cody jolted, before he remembered that Echo was—had been—a lieutenant. “Don’t fucking sir me when we’re fucking,” he said, more than a little embarrassed by how breathy his words came out. Rex calling him sir… His entire body clenched, his hips thrusting forward despite himself.

Fives snorted. “Like you don’t get wet just thinking about it.”

Cody’d been leaking like a goddamn faucet ever since Fives had pressed their bodies together. Another bubble of slick blurted out into his trousers just at the mention; there was probably a wet spot visible from Coruscant by now.

“S’for you,” he mumbled, feeling like a fool.

Fives reached up and cupped the back of his head. “Fuck,” he said softly, like Cody had broken his heart. He rocked them together for a moment, cradling Cody’s head against his shoulder, and it was so intimate that Cody almost cried. The sheer love behind it—he wanted Rex to love him like that. He wanted it so badly he might _actually_ cry.

Fives sucked in a deep breath and pulled back. “C’mon,” he said, his voice ragged as he reached down for the waist of Cody’s trousers.

Cody lurched forward, stunned from the sudden lack of heat against his chest; the brush of Fives’s knuckles, slow and teasing, against the underside of his cock jerked him out of it.

He glanced down—yeah, there was a fucking wet spot, alright—and the sight of Fives’s hands against the trapped ridge of his cock blurred his peripheral vision with pure lust. If he’d—if Fives would just press right there, under the head, Cody would go off and this dense, throbbing ache would release. Cody stared, and he held back, his breath caught, as Fives trailed his knuckles up Cody’s shaft—then skipped over the sweet spot and unbuttoned his top button, instead.

He wasn’t aware of making that thready, guttural sound until it met his ears.

“I’ve got you,” Fives said, laying his hand on Cody’s stomach, right above his cock. “You’re gonna lose your fucking mind, brother, but you’re a little too keyed up for me to just yank, yeah?”

“Yeah,” Cody said, the word “brother” crossing paths with the mental image of Rex yanking him off, and fuck, _fuck_ , he’d never felt anything like this before in his life. Suddenly, he didn’t want only to have done to him, he wanted to be an active participant. “Can I…?”

“Fuck _yes_ , you can,” Fives said, his voice going deep, an edge of a growl to it.

Cody’s hands were shaking. He hadn’t noticed it before, but his hands were shaking like the first time he’d gone through a simulated firefight as a cadet. A million square klicks of bare flesh to touch, and he couldn’t make up his mind where to lay hands first. Cock? A little obvious. He rubbed his fingers against his palms at the thought.

In the end, he went conservative. Not at all his play; he prided himself on his bold, unconventional maneuvers, but Cody was in his element on a battlefield. This was as far from his element as he could think to be. In the end, he laid his hand on Fives’s shoulder, an—an echo—of what Fives had done to him.

The grain of his skin lit up a new line of nerves under Cody’s skin. There was a solidness to Fives, a heavy corporeality that was intoxicating—but he was fragile, too. Cody knew all too well how easily a clone’s body could be torn apart. Fives knew it, too, and as Cody ran his hands over the thick muscle of Fives’s arms, Fives opened Cody’s fly with such exquisite tenderness that Cody knew he had to be half in a life that no longer was.

When his cock sprang free, it slapped up against his belly, bobbing. Cody’s legs almost buckled out from under him.

Fives made a surprised noise as he caught him.

“Sorry, sorry,” Cody said, his face flaming.

“Maybe we should hit the bunk,” Fives said, smirking. “Before you hit the floor.”

“Fuck you,” Cody muttered.

“Ask nicer than that, and I’ll let you.”

Cody froze, imagining burying himself in the searing heat of Rex’s body. His balls clenched plaintively; back in reality, Fives whistled.

“A fuckin’ faucet, sir. Look at that.”

Cody looked down; a long string of slick was trickling down his shaft, and now that he saw it, he could feel it, too: a tickling tease that made his cock jump.

“You ever been this hard before?” Fives asked him, half sympathetically, half… like the shithead little brother he was.

Cody closed his eyes. “Never without touching myself.”

“You do that often?”

How far could he take the charade before the suspension of disbelief snapped? Cody didn’t fucking know, but he threw caution to the wind. If it actually had been Rex with his hand burning a hole through his lower back, he’d have said it. “Whenever I think of you.”

Fives let out a shaky breath. “Damn. Okay. How about—yeah, on the bed. Hands and knees.”

Cody went, his heart pounding. He was brutally aware of his body, the awkward way he lowered himself to the bed, how his balls felt, heavy and swollen, against his thighs; the tight, borderline pain of his cock. He got on all fours against the rumpled blankets and he couldn't help but rock his hips a little, to ease the ache.

“Steady on,” Fives said gently behind him. “Don’t beat me to the punch.” He rummaged for something in the footlocker at the end of the bed, but then there was no noise at all, and Cody looked over his shoulder to see what was happening.

Fives was holding a half-empty bottle of lube. The look on his face was devastated. His breathing had gone choppy, his fingers white around the bottle, and Cody _knew_ this had been a bad idea.

“Hey,” he said, straightening to his knees and holding out a hand. “Hey. It’s okay.”

Fives gave him a look that clearly said it wouldn’t, but he came over to Cody anyway.

“I’m sorry.” Cody wrapped an arm around Fives’s waist and drew him in, and did his best to ignore the musky scent of his cock. “I shouldn’t have asked for this.”

Fives sniffed wetly. “Yeah, well.” He let out a deep sigh. “You did, so here we are.”

Shame curdled in Cody’s guts, and he didn’t think his erection was long for the world, even hard as he was. He let go of Fives’s hips and started to get off the bed. “I’ll go.”

Fives shoved him back on the bed. “The hell you will.”

“What—”

The line of Fives’s shoulders was rigid. “You better fucking finish what you started, Commander.” His thumb moved, and the cap of the lube bottle snapped open.

Cody grit his teeth. “Fives, I don’t think this—”

“You’re absolutely right, it’s fucked all the way up. But you started it, and I haven’t fucked anyone since Echo _died_ , so if you’re thinking about preserving my _delicate constitution_ or some banthashit, you’re a cop-out and a coward.”

Cody went still. “What did you say to me?”

Fives eyes blazed. “Hands and knees. _Sir_.”

All of a sudden, Cody knew what this was. This was Fives turning to anger to harden himself, to push through. He pushed himself slowly to his feet and squared off, putting his face in Fives’s, so close their noses almost brushed, so close their cocks did. The pull of a fight, of an old-fashioned pissing contest, set Cody’s blood stirring again. He glared Fives down. “You will answer me yes or no, Sergeant: Do you want this?”

Fives shoved his cock against Cody’s stomach. “That not enough of an answer for you?”

Cody reached out and grabbed the nape of his neck, pinning their foreheads together. “Yes or no, Sergeant, or I’m calling end ops.”

His blood was singing. Concern for a brother under his command tangled with the thrill of arousal—whether to beat Fives’s dumbfuck head in or to thrust against his belly until he came, he didn’t much give a shit, at this point.

This close, he couldn’t miss the size of Fives’s pupils, or how his cock twitched. Fives was a solid line of muscle against him, trembling with tension—until it released, and he averted his gaze as much as Cody’s grip would let him. “Yes,” he said. He closed his eyes, his expression crumpling. “I want it.”

Cody gentled his touch, raised his other hand to pull Fives closer against him. “You don’t have to front.”

Fives reached up to hold onto Cody’s wrist. “And you don’t have to protect me, sir. I’m old enough to deploy and everything.”

“Can’t help it.” His mouth twitched in a smile. “S’what they gave me that fancy antenna for.” He would have stayed like that for longer if he could have, just breathing in closeness, warmth pooling around them, but now that a fight wasn’t in the offing, Cody’s cock was making itself known again. It twitched violently in the press between their bodies, enough that his abs clenched. He sighed.

Fives snorted. “Getting a little impatient, sir?”

“Honestly, at this point I’d settle for a handjob.”

Fives’s hand went up Cody's thigh. “We can do that, if you’d rather.”

For half a moment, Cody wondered if Fives was just trying to get out of having to confront the fucking lube bottle again. Then he discarded that thought. He stopped and let himself really consider: what did he want out of this? The fantasy was pretty well shattered by this point, if it had ever been in place, but Cody still wanted to know. Wanted to know what it would be like if Rex fucked him. He wanted it with an ache that was entirely separate from the throb of his cock, and burned so deep into his chest he thought it might just be etched on his heart.

“I’d rather you fuck me,” he said quietly. “If we’re being honest about what we want.”

Fives nodded, his eyes focused somewhere about the level of Cody’s collarbones. By some miracle of the gods Cody didn’t really believe in, they were both of them still hard. “Hands and knees?”

Cody didn’t answer, he just went back to the bed. He ducked his head, mostly to try and hide his face; not from any pretence at being Echo, but he felt exposed, and without a bucket on it was instinct to duck his head. He jumped when Fives touched his hip.

“Easy, easy,” Fives said. He ran his hand up Cody’s back, tracing the lines of muscle; Cody shuddered as gooseflesh broke out across his skin, and it took everything he had not to arch up into the touch. He wanted Fives to press bodily against him again, wanted skin-on-skin so badly it almost overtook the tired, familiar hurt of wanting Rex. His breath came hard and fast.

“Deepen your breathing, ner vod,” Fives said, his voice low, his hands pressing harder into Cody’s back. 

Cody did his best, dredging up a breathing pattern and counting his inhales. It helped some. It didn’t help how much he needed Fives to touch him. “Please—” he cut himself off, half ashamed.

“Please?” Fives’s hands stopped, one a brand against his hip, the other between his shoulder blades.

“Keep touching me,” Cody forced out. “Please don’t stop.”

“Oh, ner vod,” Fives said sadly. His touch grew heavier, though, pressing into Cody’s flesh in sweeping strokes. Cody moaned, beside himself, and—yeah. He was arching, his elbows buckling before he locked them to keep from faceplanting in the pillow.

Fives’s touch gradually focused more and more on Cody’s ass, digging into the muscle, working his hands over Cody’s hips and the tops of his thighs. Cody noticed, as though he was separate from himself, that he was trembling. His cock dangled beneath his belly, hard as hammered blood, dragging against his groin, and Fives’s thumbs swept ever closer to his taint. Each time they did, Cody was shocked back to his body. Fives had hardly even done anything and Cody was already on the sharp edge of sensation.

Finally, Fives took a solid handful of each cheek and pulled them apart, baring Cody’s taint. The stretch of skin made Cody itch between his shoulder blades, like a sniper had him in their sights. Fives paused for a long moment. “You prepped yourself?”

Cody’s fingers tightened in the blankets. “This was my idea, I’m not gonna make you do all the work.”

“Such a damn ARF scout,” Fives replied without heat. Then he pulled back, and Cody heard the click of the lube bottle opening.

“What are you—”

“The more, the better,” Fives said. “Trust me. This is your first time, right?”

“...Yeah.”

“Then you absolutely want more lube.” He set the bottle down, and for an endless moment Cody waited, his body tense as a firing pin spring, before he felt the cold, wet touch of Fives’s fingers.

“Shh, shh, easy,” Fives said, not moving his fingers at all, just resting them against Cody’s hole. Time stopped at that single touch. No one but himself had ever touched Cody there, before; he felt… he felt…

“I know,” Fives said, his voice low and soothing. “I’m gonna take it slow, don’t worry.”

Cody let out the breath he’d been holding. He loosened his fingers from the rucked-up sheets, spreading them wide.

Slowly, Fives began to move his fingertip in a circle, around the edge of Cody’s hole. Not dipping in yet, which Cody was obscurely thankful for, but tracing the rim of it, until it didn’t feel so strange. He’d never realized how sensitive he was, there. He’d—he’d touched himself, obviously, he’d fucking _scouted the terrain_ , fuck you, Fives, but it was different when someone else was doing the touching.

Cody wasn’t used to this, anymore. Being vulnerable. Being the person without any answers. The buck had stopped with him for so long—it was a point of pride, that he could take care of problems before they hit General Kenobi—that he’d forgotten what it had felt like to be an overwhelmed cadet.

Only—only now it wasn’t weapons specs and trigonometry, it was the shivery heat spreading through him at the slip of Fives’s finger on his asshole. For a brief moment the image of _Rex_ fingering him open overlaid the reality of Fives, and everything below Cody’s bellybutton clenched up like a fist.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Fives said softly. “Sweet and hot and wrong all at once.”

Cody shuddered, beside himself.

It was on the tip of his tongue to tell Fives to advance position already, but he held back. He wasn’t the Marshal Commander, in this room. Here, he was just Cody, and Cody didn’t have the experience to know when—

Fives’s finger pushed past the tight muscle of his sphincter, and Cody’s train of thought rammed straight off the tracks. His whole body froze at the intrusion. It was _nothing_ like his own fingers. It was foreign, it was almost unwelcome—Cody knew for a fact he didn’t have to take a dump, but his body wasn’t so sure. 

“You’ll get used to it,” Fives said to his unasked question. “Then it’ll get so much better, I promise.”

“So keep going.” Cody’s voice sounded unsteady in his own ears. He swallowed heavily. The last time he’d paid this much attention to his own ass was when some Fettforsaken strain of norovirus had ripped through the 212th while they were stationed on Mimban. Cody still got the cold shakes whenever he thought of how lucky they were, that the Separatists hadn’t attacked.

“Yes, _sir_ ,” Fives said, with a shadow of the bright mischievousness Cody had heard so many stories about. He didn’t pick up the pace, though. He didn’t move at all; he just kept his finger there, stuffed up Cody’s ass, until Cody slowly started relaxing around it.

“That’s it,” he said softly. “There’s no rush. We’ve got all night.”

Cody reflected that, no, he _didn’t_ have all night. There was a campaign in two days, and the requisitions, inspections, and briefings were flying thick and fast. Caf could only do so much, when it was your hundredth day of sleep deprivation. 

Crys might say something about priorities. Cody might say something back about taking advantage of an opportunity.

“Stop thinking,” Fives said, moving his finger just a little. Enough for Cody to feel it. Enough to make him gasp.

“Force of habit,” he said back, more breathless than he’d meant.

Fives snorted. “Yeah, that’s Echo, all right.”

Cody looked back over his shoulder, that uneasy, guilty feeling churning low in his gut, beside the burn of arousal. “I’m not sure if…”

“Yeah, don’t worry,” Fives said grimly. “I’m not trying to. Just… remembering.”

“Tell me about him?”

There was a heavy pause, and Cody winced. Not… not his best move.

“You really want to hear?” Fives sounded doubtful. “Not many people want to hear about their partner’s previous partners.” He moved his finger pointedly, stretching the muscle, and Cody gasped again, his legs going watery.

“This isn’t… like usual fucks,” he managed to say. “He’s already here, may as well make it official.”

“Yeah? You gonna tell me about _Rex_ , Commander?”

Cody bit his lip.

“Yeah, that’s what I thought.” Fives had settled into a rhythm, stroking Cody’s inner walls, loosening him up. Cody’s body didn’t seem to care about the gravity of the conversation; his cock hung heavy and leaking, the awkwardness of a finger up his butt long forgotten.

“I didn’t know him on Kamino,” Cody finally said. Panted, really; waves of nervy sensation were rippling through his body, settling in a dense, tingling weight around his tailbone. “Everyone thinks we knew each other as cadets, but I didn’t meet him until Skywalker was presented with the 501st.”

Fives slowed down a little, listening, and Cody found himself rocking his hips back. “No, hey, don’t stop.”

“Sorry,” Fives said, picking the pace back up. “So you met him after deployment?”

“Yeah. He was nervous as a—what’s Vos say, ‘nervous as a long-tailed tooka in a roomful of rocking chairs.’” Cody huffed a laugh. “He’d fucking polished his armor. All because he was meeting _me_.”

Fives snorted and dragged his finger down, and Cody quivered at how good it felt. “Yeah, forget the _General_.”

There was a sharp, almost cynical tone to Fives’s voice that Cody didn’t care for.

“I didn’t ask for that kind of—of _hero_ worship.”

He felt more than heard Fives’s shrug. “Didn’t have to, sir. You’re still a legend. I’m still not convinced this is actually happening.”

Cody shook his head. “Wh-what about you? How did you meet?”

Fives hesitated long enough that Cody thought he just wasn’t going to get anything out of him. Then the finger in his ass pulled out, and Cody half-turned to apologize—but Fives just shook the bottle where Cody could see. “Need more lube,” he said, slicking up his fingers. He didn’t look—he looked pensive.

“He was my batcher,” he finally said, and then he was pushing _two_ wet, cold fingers into Cody’s ass. “Easy does it. I’m still going slow.”

Cody breathed through the ache, and willed his muscles to relax. If he could just—fucking relax, then it wouldn’t feel like he was about to shit all over Fives’s hand. It’d start feeling good again. “There’s—there’s this thing Rex does,” he forced out. “Used to do. He’d spin his blasters into his holsters.”

Fives scoffed. “I saw a brother shoot out a ceiling tile trying that on the ARC course. The training sergeants threw him right out the door.”

“Good,” Cody said, spreading his knees a little, his breath hitching at the change in pressure. “It’s a dumbshit thing to do.”

“But you like it when our noble captain breaks the rules, huh.”

Cody shuddered. “I like that he’s the exception that proves the rule.”

“Ah.”

And… yeah. That really did say a whole lot about what Cody saw in Rex. The CT who survived the ARC course but chose not to become an ARC. The mutie who endured _difference_ and survived to excel. To become the very best the GAR could provide, and one of the best men Cody had ever known. His crooked smile, the fucking scar on his chin, how hard it was to get him to drop the professional facade, but how fucking rewarding it could be when he finally did. Cody’s hands clenched in the blankets, to try and ease the ache in his chest.

There was a distance between him and Rex that Cody had never been able to fully overcome. Part of it was unit—there was a physical distance. More of it was the rank difference. Rex was a junior officer; Cody was the highest rank a clone could attain. Cody would cut off both his hands before he risked coercing Rex, let alone over something as sordid as his baser wants. All he truly wanted, more even than to fuck or be fucked by Rex, was to transcend that distance. To just… exist with Rex, as two brothers. No rank, unit, or… anything else to come between them.

Slowly, the press of Fives’s fingers penetrated the haze of longing around his mind. He’d started scissoring them, pulling against Cody’s hole, stretching him open, and it—it burned a little, but it was starting to feel good again. Fuck, the thought of Rex doing this, Rex getting him ready to take his cock—

“I didn’t really like Echo that much until after Rishi,” Fives said quietly, and Cody tried to hide how much of a bucket of water to the face it was, to hear his voice instead of Rex’s. “I guess once we were forced together, we found out… we actually got along a lot better than we realized.”

“The stresses of squad dynamics,” Cody said, re-focusing on the rising tingling sensation to get his mind off his disappointment. “Different personalities bring different traits to the fore, any CC worth their credits can see it and—oh _fuck_!”

“ _Finally_ ,” Fives said. “I was starting to think you just didn’t fucking have one.”

“Prostate?” Cody somehow managed to ask.

“Yeah.” He gently stroked his fingers and nailed it again.

Cody shuddered so hard the bed shook. “Ease up,” he said faintly. “I don’t think I can take that much that quickly.”

“Roger, roger.”

“Do _not_.”

Fives snickered and pulled away to apply more lube. Cody hadn’t noticed it when Fives’s fingers were in his ass, but now that they were gone, he definitely felt… looser. And wetter, which shouldn’t have been as hot as it was, but the thought that—maybe not now, but soon—someone could just come up and fuck into him without any resistance, just _use_ him and not require he think—

“Think you’re ready for three?”

Cody could still feel the sense-memory of Fives’s fingers in his ass. His skin was tingling, and none of his breaths seemed to properly fill his lungs. He—he wanted more, he wanted to have a dick in his ass, not just fingers, but Fives was setting the pace, here. Fives had experience, not Cody. He took a deep, lung-splitting breath and let it out. “Yeah.”

He tensed up again at the first touch, but the tingling heat came back faster. He found himself rocking his hips, chasing sensation; when Fives hit his prostate again, he had to lock his elbows to keep from collapsing into the mattress. “Where’re we at, Fives,” he asked, panting.

Fives gave a long, slow drag of his fingers, avoiding Cody’s prostate. “Dunno. How do you feel about a little pain with your fucking?”

Cody measured the odds. “Are we talking medbay damage, or a sting to remember you by?”

“You’ll be feeling it tomorrow, but not in a bad way.

“Then I’m ready.”

Fives gave a short puff of air. “Thought you’d never ask, sir.” His fingers pulled out—Jango’s fucking bones, but Cody had to bite back a noise at that—and Cody couldn’t help peering over his shoulder to watch as Fives slicked up his cock.

He had a nice cock, if Cody did say so himself. All clones did, thank the prime. He didn’t have _too_ much experience outside of the ranks of the GAR—babysitting the 3rd Systems Army didn’t leave a lot of time for scrolling birther porn—but he’d seen enough. Enough to know he was content with clones. In theory, anyway. He’d jacked himself off the night before to fantasies of fucking Rex open, but he was about to be on the receiving end of the real deal, and all of a sudden he wasn’t so sure it was going to fit, after all.

“You’re thinking again,” Fives said, holding himself steady.

“Better fuck it out of me, Sergeant,” Cody replied.

Fives gave a lopsided grin. “Sir, yes _sir_.” He shuffled up close to Cody on the bed, one hand reaching out to Cody’s hip; the other steadied his cock. Cody turned back to face the bulkhead. He’d trade his left nut to see the view Fives had, so he could fill out his scanty spank bank with true-to-life fantasies. But this… this was good, too. He waited, breath baited, for Fives to move forward.

When he felt the hot nudge of Fives’s cock against his hole, rational thought flew out of Cody’s head like it had hit the eject button. He was reduced to simple, incredulous declaratives: Fives’s _cock_ was _touching his ass_. Fives was about to _fuck_ him. His own cock, half-forgotten beneath the flood of strange, new sensations, jerked against his belly.

“Alright, Commander?”

“Cleared for launch,” Cody managed.

“Copy that, sir.”

The slow press of Fives’s cockhead against— _into_ —his hole drove the breath from Cody’s lungs. It stung. Fives hadn’t made light. But he’d also done his work well, and what little was left of Cody’s higher functions was grateful. “Hold—hold up,” Cody said, gritting his teeth.

“Yeah,” Fives said, sounding breathless himself. His fingers were digging into Cody’s hips; Cody focused on that pain rather than the pain in his ass, and slowly he relaxed. He’d taken three fingers; he could fucking take a cock.

“Slowly,” Cody said, when the pain had subsided into taut, slick heat.

“Wilco.”

It wasn’t a smooth push in, but it _was_ slow. Fives’s breath was ragged against Cody’s neck; the heat of his chest a furnace against his back. His dick… Cody swallowed, his hands clenching in the blankets. He could feel every ridge, vein, and pulsing heartbeat. He felt stretched as thin and tight as the skin over Fives’s cock, he felt so… naked, so torn open, that he tried to hide his face against his shoulder, pitifully glad Fives was fucking him from behind.

But at the same time, he felt safe. He didn’t know how else to describe it. He barely knew Fives, but he was a brother, and brothers meant safety; they always had. Fives was around him and in him and—and—

Fives’s breath was moist and shaky against his shoulder. “You doing okay?”

“Yeah,” Cody said, and he hoped he didn’t sound as overcome as Fives did. He wouldn’t put high odds on it. He was shivering from the feeling of Fives lodged halfway up under his diaphragm, and Fives was shaking too. “What about you?”

Fives didn’t say anything for a moment, one hand still hot against Cody’s hip, the other coming around him to brace himself against the bed. “I’m fine,” he said, which meant he probably wasn’t.

If he was a good commander, if he truly cared about his men, Cody would have called it right there. He should have. But Cody wasn’t as great and noble as everyone seemed to think he was. He couldn’t be, because he heard Fives’s tattered, gasping breath, right on the edge of a sob, and he felt the heartbreakingly gentle way Fives stroked Cody’s hip, and instead of calling it off, he let it go on. He kept still and let Fives muster himself.

He let himself imagine it was Rex broken up about _him_ , he let himself be selfish, and it was the cruelest thing he had ever done. His stomach curdled in shame even as his cock drooled into the sheets.

The very best he could make himself do was hold still without rocking his hips. He wanted to move so badly the _walls_ felt like they were vibrating from the intensity of it, but he held still until Fives pulled away, taking the bone-melting warmth of his body with him. Despite himself, Cody let out a low sound of discontent.

“Easy,” Fives said, barely sounding like himself. His voice was soft, hoarse, like he’d been screaming over triple-ack fire for hours. “I’ve got what you need.”

He started rocking his hips. It might have been slowly, but Cody couldn’t tell; his mind whited out at the intensity of the sensations. He chased after it, his balls squeezing tight up against his cock, threatening—until the shock of novelty eased and they relaxed away from orgasm. “ _Fuck_ ,” he panted.

Fives gave a voiceless huff of what might have been laughter. “Yeah. S’the idea.” He kept the pace steady, hardly moving his hips, just rocking in and out, building tension, letting Cody’s body get used to it without making him shoot off too quickly. Cody was pathetically grateful. This would probably be the only time he got to experience this; he wanted it to last.

When the tingling in the base of Cody’s spine faded, he unclenched his fingers and let his hips tilt back. “You can go a little faster.”

“Thank the _Force_ ,” Fives said fervently, and began to pick up the pace until he was almost pulling out entirely on the backstroke, leaving the most haunting, agonizing void in his wake; only to thrust back in and fill Cody and—Jango’s bones, Cody could barely breathe from the intensity of it. Could barely think. His cock bounced between his legs and every time it did sparks ran up his spine, and—

“Shit!” he shouted, louder than he meant to, as the head of Fives’s cock scraped over his prostate.

“You like that?” Fives asked, almost sounding challenging. “Think you can take it?”

“ _Gods_ ,” Cody replied, strapped for words. Fives angled his hips and started nailing that sweet spot with every stroke, and Cody stopped breathing altogether. He didn’t know whether to push back into it or shy away; it was so intense, it built so quickly it was almost frightening; his muscles tightened all at once and Cody gasped like a dying man as he came. It ripped through him, spreading up his chest and down to his fucking knees; and he felt himself grow hot, and then damp with sweat. He’d _never_ come like that before in his life.

Fives, meanwhile, had eased off, slowed his strokes back to gentle rocks of his hips.

“Jango’s bones,” Cody finally managed. He was still hard. He’d come like an orbital bombardment and he was still fucking hard.

“Still okay?” Fives said, his hands tight on Cody’s hips. “Not too sensitive?”

Cody’s bad knee cracked as he shifted his weight. “I’m good.” He was practically floating, and it was only pride that kept him from falling face-first, ass-up into the mattress. Fives ran a hand down his back and he shivered.

Rex. If Fives was half in memory, then goddamn it Cody would let himself have his fantasy. It was why he’d come here in the first place. He was already taking advantage of a younger brother’s bereavement; in for a decicred, in for a dozen.

It was Rex who pulled out slightly to drizzle more lube over Cody’s hole. It was Rex’s hands moving over his back, down his sides, gently massaging his asshcheeks; it was Rex’s soft breathing and Rex’s warm, sweat-damp skin, it was Rex’s cock splitting him open, it was _Rex_ —

He barely noticed when his breath started hitching. Because it wasn’t Rex, and that was the problem. It never _would_ be Rex. Cody was a pervert, and Rex was gone on his Jedi commander, and all Rex would ever see Cody as was his friend, because Cody couldn’t lose him.

The hand on his cock short-circuited his brain. “Stop thinking,” Fives said softly. Horribly gently.

“I—I think this was a mistake,” Cody said, his voice wobbling like a cadet’s.

“I think you’re right.” Fives gently stroked Cody’s cock. “Do you want to stop?”

Cody couldn’t decide. For once in his life, he was paralyzed. “Do you?”

The movement was slight, but Cody felt Fives’s shrug. “I’m already balls-deep, Commander. May as well turn this shitshow into a real disaster.”

Cody snorted despite himself. “Alright,” he said. “So long as we both know it’s gonna be a disaster.”

“I’m an ARC, sir. You sniff ‘em out, I run in headlong.”

Cody pushed himself back on Fives’s cock, and fuck, it still felt like heaven in the pit of hell. “Get running, then.”

Fives didn’t have a snappy comeback, this time. He just started fucking. Short and quick, dragging against Cody’s prostate on the pullout, but missing it on the downstroke—enough to wind someone up, but not overstimulate, a distant part of Cody’s mind supplied. But it was enough. It was e-fucking-nough. It didn’t matter that Cody hadn’t quite come down from his last orgasm; not even three strokes later and he was on the edge of it again. It pooled in his guts, hot and trembling and imminent.

Suddenly Fives’s thrusts went erratic. His hand slipped back to Cody’s hip, and Cody was outraged for all of two seconds before he realized Fives was about to come. He thrust home a handful more times before his hips locked forward, and Cody fucking _felt_ his cock harden to its peak—a breathless, reaching, falling moment, Fives buried as far as it was possible for him to go, before he gave a small, shattered noise and started coming. Cody felt that, too. He felt the rush of warmth, the jump of Fives’s cock, the twitching of his thighs, and his whole body went hot at the knowledge that Fives’s was spilling his load inside him. He couldn’t help himself. He grabbed his own cock, stroked it twice, and then he was coming hard and fast and brutal on Fives’s dick.

They collapsed in an indelicate heap on the bed. Consciousness wavered in and out; Cody hadn’t been this relaxed in—years, probably. The heavy weight of Fives at his back was soothing, like the weight of armor, but warm and giving, and he smelled… not like Rex, Cody had breathed Rex’s scent in along with recycled air for thirteen hours straight on their base inspection, but he smelled like coming home to rest after a hard day’s simulation. He smelled like a brother.

For a time it was simply that: floating on a gentle tide of hormones and exertion. But then Fives tensed up and started drawing in on himself. Cody hissed when his cock slipped out, both at the wet slip of jizz down his taint and the sudden new awareness of how sore he was—but Fives’s breath went soft and unhappy against Cody’s upper back, and Cody was already turning to pull him into his arms.

“Shh, shh,” he said. “Let it out.”

“Fuck, I—” Fives’s voice cracked. “I _miss_ him!”

“I know. I’m sorry.”

Fives clutched at Cody, buried his face against his neck, and Cody did his best to repay the kindness Fives had shown him. His little brother was hurting; all that mattered was soothing the pain. The campaign was days away, yet; Cody’s bunk would manage without him. He ran his fingers through Fives’s hair and let him find comfort how he could.

**Author's Note:**

> A fragging incident is "the deliberate killing or attempted killing by a soldier of a fellow soldier, usually a superior officer or NCO."
> 
> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯


End file.
